From Private Repository to Public Forum

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A negligee by Laura Span, “Slipping Into the Skin of Another,” above left, and the video “75 Watt,” top right, by Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen, are part of the exhibition “Dear Diary: Update on All.”CreditCreditTop right, courtesy of Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen; photographs by Jim Frank

By Martha Schwendener

Feb. 7, 2014

The divide between public and private has lessened considerably in recent decades as social media reveals what near strangers had for breakfast and corporations and governments collect personal data for their own uses. Artists have taken note, and “Dear Diary: Update on All” at the Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College offers a global look at how the diary form evolved, as the gallery release puts it, from “a private repository” to a public forum in which “the personal becomes a platform for social interaction, reflection and activism.”

One corner of the gallery is devoted to this last idea. Here you will find Aalam Wassef’s video updates on the recent revolutions and uprisings in Egypt. Mr. Wassef, an Egyptian artist, had to work anonymously for several years, given the outspoken nature of his work and criticisms of the Mubarak regime. Using humor and bits of found footage, he offers short musings in “Egypt, 26th of July 2013 — The surreal story of Egypt” or “Egypt, 2nd of April 2013 — My faith is my own business.” He surfaced publicly for a time, but given recent events in Egypt, Mr. Wassef has returned to working anonymously.

Nearby is a giant projection divided into three segments, “Endless War” (2012-13). Created by YoHa, the artistic team of Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji, along with Matthew Fuller, the work takes raw data divulged by WikiLeaks regarding details of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and translates it into more commonly intelligible information. Raw, coded data scrolls down the left side of the screen and decoded data is seen on the right, revealing real-world causes and effects. Amanullah Mojadidi, who was born to Afghan parents in the United States and moved to Afghanistan, also “decodes” official information, translating State Department updates for Kabul — shown as printouts on the wall — into personalized love messages, which are delivered in audio form on headphones.

Kannan Arunasalam is a Sri Lankan-born artist who grew up in London and returned to his home country in 2005. His project “I Am” (2010-12), which includes video and a website, uses the diary form to interview elders in Sri Lanka, particularly as people from different ethnic groups are ejected from the country, causing strife and transformation. The driving question for Mr. Arunasalam, as he says on the project’s website, is: “Was there a time when people in Sri Lanka didn’t describe themselves as Sinhalese or Tamil, Muslim or Burgher? Or at least when these identities weren’t foremost in their minds?” For viewers halfway around the world, “I Am” offers both a rich portrait of a region through the eyes of its elders, as well as a reminder of how, when racial or ethnic differences are put in the foreground, they overshadow both public and private life.

Other works are more playful. One of the best in the show is a wonderful video by Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen, “75 Watt” (2013), for which the artists rented out part of a factory in China and paid workers to construct an object that has no use (a charge often leveled at art objects). The white geometric shape, which looks a little like an unwieldy audio speaker, is handled by the workers in their bright blue jackets, who were also choreographed to move and interact with one another in funny and absurd ways. The piece feels a little out of place within the “diary” context, but it’s a nice work.

More on point, perhaps, is Chris Collins’s “Boring Instagram Photos” (2012), a video slide show of mundane images collected by the artist from Instagram that reminds us how, in the age of instant and easy transmission, the image “diary” of contemporary lives is often quite dull. (Artists like Joachim Schmid and Martin Paar have also specialized in the dull photograph — which becomes kind of interesting, or at least funny, when it’s bracketed and showcased in the realm of art.) Oscar Muñoz’s archive of photographs, displayed as a projection onto a flat surface, is a more sober record both of the drug wars in his native Colombia and of various historical images.

“Dear Diary” is an uneven show. Works like Laura Splan’s negligees and objects for an imaginary trousseau, all made out of her own skin, removed through a chemical peel process, are beautifully crafted. But they feel more tied to a ’90s conversation about identity and the female body than to social media or new forms of communication. Similarly, Chlöe Bass’s “Tea Will Be Served” (2011-13), which includes a harness-like apparatus that people can put on to drink tea together, feels more in the realm of participatory and social-practice art than new media. (The work also recalls the interactive objects of the German artist Franz Erhard Walter, whose work was showcased at Dia:Beacon a few years ago.)

The other problem — which may be a boon for some people — is that the exhibition includes little in the way of didactics, that is, information on the wall labels or elsewhere. The curator, Jacqueline Shilkoff, has instead arranged for students from Purchase College to, as the gallery release puts it, “engage in conversation with visitors about the exhibition as well as help them navigate the show and interact with artwork.”

Some visitors may enjoy the experience. For this visitor, engaging with someone while looking at art replicated the downside of mass communications and social media: It was a distraction. Most art these days requires a bit of explanation, primarily around its materials and the context in which it was made. Beyond this, however, most good art is like the proverbial diary: It contains worlds of information and generally speaks for itself.